Through the Darkness

He trained his stick on the battered manufactory, ready to punish the first of Mezentio’s men who pursued the retreating Unkerlanters. But the Algarvians proved too battlewise for that. Instead of charging straight into the meat grinder, they used their egg-tossers again, to make the Unkerlanters stay down. And their footsoldiers came at the Unkerlanter defenders not straight out of the manufactory but in a pincer movement from north and south of it.

Some of the redheads yelled “Mezentio!” and “Algarve!” Others cried, “Sibiu!” Leudast had seen that the enemy soldier soldiers who raised that shout were uncommonly ferocious. If they got in among his comrades, bad things happened. He turned to blaze at them--and never saw the Algarvian who blazed him.

The beam went straight through his left calf. He did what he’d seen and heard so many other soldiers do--he screamed in pain and clutched at himself, everything else forgotten. A moment later, one of his comrades blazed the redhead, who also screamed. Leudast heard him, but only distantly. His hurt filled the world.

He tried to put weight on the wounded leg, and found he couldn’t. When he looked down, he saw two neat holes in his calf, each about as thick as his middle finger. Some stick wounds were self-cauterizing. Not this one: blood ran down his leg from each hole and began to pool in his boot. He fumbled for the length of bandage he carried in a pouch on his belt. His fingers didn’t want to obey him. He found he did better when he didn’t look at his leg. Even after so much horror on so many battlefields, the sight of his own blood left him queasy.

Somebody shouted, “The sergeant’s been blazed!”

“Can you move, Sergeant?” somebody else asked.

“I can crawl,” Leudast answered. He gulped. That white bandage was turning red fast. And binding up the wound didn’t make the pain go away. If anything, he hurt worse than ever. He tasted blood in his mouth, too; he must have bitten down on the inside of his lip or cheek without even noticing.

“Here, Sergeant. I’ll get you away.” That was Aldrian, stooping beside him. “Can you get your arm over my shoulder?” Leudast wasn’t sure he could. When he tried, he managed. “Go on one leg if you can, Sergeant,” the youngster told him. Leudast tried. He wasn’t sure whether his awkward hops did more good than harm, but Aldrian didn’t complain, so he kept hopping.

They hadn’t got more than a couple of furlongs from the actual fighting line before a grim-faced inspector popped out of a hole in the ground and aimed his stick at both of them. “Show blood,” he said curtly. He looked ready, even eager, to blaze. If neither of them could show a wound, he’d kill them both for cowards.

But Leudast used his free hand to point to the bloody bandage on his leg. With a grudging nod, the inspector gestured with his stick, waving the two soldiers on. Eggs fell around them moments later. Aldrian tried to hold Leudast up as they both dove for cover, but Leudast banged his calf anyhow. Fresh fire ran through it. He howled like a lovesick hound. He could no more have kept himself from howling than he could have kept his heart from beating.

After a journey that seemed endless but was surely less than a mile, they came to one of the gullies than ran down toward the Wolter. Fresh troops were coming up out of the gully and heading for the battle line. Other men--physicians’ orderlies--took charge of Leudast from Aldrian.

“How bad is it?” one of them asked him.

He glared at the fellow. “I died last week,” he snapped.

That startled a laugh out of the orderly, who gave the wound a quick examination and delivered his verdict: “They can patch you up. We’ll get you down to the river, then sneak you over tonight, I expect. You’ll be back at it.” Had the orderly judged Leudast wouldn’t be back at it soon, he got the feeling they would have cut his throat so they wouldn’t have to bother with him.

As things were, they got him through the gully, moving against the stream of men coming up from the river. Algarvian dragons dropped eggs on the gully while they were in it. Most burst to either side, but a couple gave the redheads gruesome successes. Overhanging cliffs hid the spot where the orderlies laid Leudast from Algarvian attention. He had plenty of wounded soldiers for company.

“You’ll go over tonight,” one of the orderlies repeated. Somewhat to his own surprise, he did. As the boat carried him south across the Wolter, he realized it was the first time since the war with Algarve began that he’d been taken away from the fighting, not toward it. That was almost worth getting wounded for. Almost--the pain in his leg said nothing could really be worth it.

Traku gave Talsu a severe look. “Hold still, curse it,” the tailor told his son. “If you were a wee bit smaller--just a wee bit, mind you--I’d box your ears but good. How can I measure you for your wedding suit if you keep fidgeting like you’ve got a flock of fleas in your drawers?”